Kierkegaard in 19 Minutes

Kierkegaard in 19 minutes in this video I'd like to talk about the work of the early mid 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who is usually credited as being the grandfather of the entire existentialist movement but before we get into the details Kierkegaard's philosophy let's take a minute to characterize it in very general terms first Kierkegaard's philosophy is very theistic and more specifically very Christian so much so that he might well be considered more of a Christian theologian than a philosopher second Kierkegaard's philosophy tends to be very individualistic third it's good to know upfront that Kierkegaard frequently employs what sometimes known as indirect communication which consists of devices such as sarcasm irony pseudonyms metaphors of akut of stories etc this tends to make reading Kierkegaard somewhat challenging since his real point is often the exact opposite of what he seems to be saying but the rationale for this is that he wants to draw the reader toward having an actual experience which of course demands a much deeper much more thoughtful level of engagement with his texts and ideas okay now that we've characterized Kierkegaard's work in very general terms let's look at some of his more specific ideas one good place to start is with his distinction between two kinds of truth objective truth and subjective truth for Kierkegaard objective truth has to do with truth the way we normally think of it for instance truth is a product of empirical observation such as in the case of the Natural Sciences or truth is governed by abstract disciplines like those of formal logic and mathematics one thing to notice about objective truths is how much they're governed by consensus for instance we commonly regard e equals mc-squared or PV equals NRT as being true first because many expert scientists have come to a consensus that they are indeed true assertions and then because they were consequently propagated across the social terrain to form a part of our larger cultural consensus about what's true however some kinds of truth are much more individual and personal than that there are some things in life that we just have to experience firsthand before they can appear to us as truths at all to paraphrase Louis Armstrong a little if you actually have to ask what jazz is then you won't understand the answer in other words for the truth of jazz to appear to us we have to have at least some experience already seem like incomprehensible nonsense to us not a worthwhile musical truth for Kierkegaard most of life's really important truths are like that they're subjective truths rather than objective truths in other words a product of individual experience rather than consensus based upon empirical observation and/or abstract logic basically objective truth is a great paradigm for doing chemistry or physics but it's a very poor paradigm for fathoming the human soul or for cultivating our capacity for wisdom let's look at a concrete example of the difference between objective and subjective truth our mortality the question is how do we really know we're going to die well from the perspective of objective truth we know we're going to die because we empirically observed that all human beings eventually die and that we ourselves are human beings logically then what applies to all human beings would also apply to us the objective truth of our mortality is consequently grounded in a combination of empirical observation and logical inference however the subjective truth of our mortality is something very different something much more personal and much more palpable for mortality to appear to us as a subjective truth we actually have to experience how death runs through every moment of our law like an unsettling undercurrent drawing us ever closer to the distant horizon toward our ultimate undoing and dissolution we have to feel at least now and then that cold and very intimate impressive finality upon our souls to feel ourselves both giving birth and dying as we move from moment a moment but to experience the truth of our mortality that way is much more personally challenging than simply accepting it as an object of truth to experience mortality as a subjective truth means being willing to expand the outer perimeter of what death even means to us and simultaneously what life means to us for Kierkegaard the truth of religious life works much the same way faith in God isn't a matter of accumulating some combination of correct empirical observations and or logical arguments because the truth of religious faith is a subjective affair something like appreciating jazz or feeling the reality of our mortality or falling in love in other words something we have to experience firsthand for it to count as a truth at all this may seem like an obvious point but actually its implications can quickly sort out several vexing conundrums that arise today for instance from this perspective most of the disputes that commonly arise between a secular scientific worldview and it's religious counterpart are really rooted in differences in people's experience already differences in their personal perceptions about how truth works and which truth should matter which is why these kinds of emotionally charged squabbles almost never change anyone's mind about anything it's because people are trying to resolve by debate an issue that's really rooted in experience a further implication is that religious faith isn't actually a matter of knowing anything or of proving or disproving that God exists since knowing and the certainty that goes along with it are elements of the object of view of truth which is not really what religious faith is about in the first place like all of the rest of life's subjective truths faith in God is what takes over when all the world's objective evidence has reached its outermost boundary and the reality is that our objective knowledge of things always has its limitations consequently religious faith is actually in an intimate relation with doubt and uncertainty for Kierkegaard this is part of what differentiates what he calls a night of faith from a mere religious zealot or fanatic a religious zealot claims to know that God exists as if it were a kind of object of truth which is tantamount to not having religious faith in any genuine sense at all in contrast a night of faith believes that God exists and throws the entire weight of his or her existence in that direction against the backdrop of all of the reasons to doubt it consequently for Kierkegaard doubt is not a diminishment of religious faith but it's actually integral to its value and its power as a form of subjective truth which is part of the reason why religious life requires passion and commitment a kind of passionate inwardness as he says rather than just a smug comfortable sense of superiority and just being right another implication here is that because Christian faith is really about a kind of interior subjective experience all truth it's not actually visible from the outside for instance one can look sound and behave exactly like a stereotypical Christian and still be missing the essential inner experience or core of relating to God for instance one can easily fall into the trap of thinking oneself as a real Christian just because well it's how one grew up or just because one is conforming to the dictates of the larger culture or just because one hasn't seriously considered any alternatives or just out of blind mechanical habit similarly one can go through all the motions of attending church regularly reading the Bible every day theology and even saying grace before every meal and still be missing the essential experiencial character of Christianity the unsettling implication here is that not everyone who claims to be a Christian or who thinks of himself that way actually is one in fact probably very few of us are most of us are probably just going along with the herd just conforming in a bang just part of Christendom basically the Christian mob is Kierkegaard sarcastically puts it but then what are most of our lives really about for Kierkegaard well for him the unflattering answer is that most of us are probably simply obeying the dictates of pleasure and pain especially in the form of trying to maximize our happiness and minimize our unhappiness Kierkegaard calls this pattern of life the aesthetic mode of existence and for most of us it's probably tempting to think that this is the ultimate goal of our lives to be mostly in a pleasurable state of happiness however for Kierkegaard there's a lot more to life than that the reason why maximizing our pleasure in minimizing our pain is not a complete answer to the riddle of our existence is that life's pleasures very quickly lose their charm when we repeat them enough think of buying something that you really wanted for a long time a new pair of shoes maybe so you save your money and eventually you experience that warm almost visceral thrill of finally owning them and that thrill lasts a little while maybe a week or two but then after a few months it's just another pair of shoes not particularly exciting just there so where did all that pleasure go well it went where all pleasures go eventually when we repeat them often enough we naturally become bored with them at this point probably most of us look for new pleasure one to replace the one that used to excite us maybe we take up binge watching lots of TV or maybe we collect sexual experiences the way some people collect postage stamps or maybe we become a connoisseur of fine cognac but over time the same basic thing will eventually happen with those pursuits to the repetition will eventually exhaust their allure and become bored with them - now imagine that at some point in your life you were to realize that it's not actually your shoes or your TV or your sex life that's boring you what's really boring you is the entire hamster wheel pattern of chasing after the next pleasure depleting it and then chasing after a new one bla bla bla odd infinitum at that point you might be ready for an entirely new paradigm for your life one that lies beyond the whole circular trap of always trying to obtain the next pleasure and/or avoid the next pain for Kierkegaard that next pattern would be what he calls the ethical mode of existence and its definitive feature is that life becomes mostly about doing what's right for its own sake especially in the form of a bang that dictates of secular ethics examples of this are definitely harder to find in our modern world but a fairly common one would take the form of being a parent at least in the genuine sense to be a parent in the genuine sense means that your main pattern of life is no longer about maximizing your own pleasure but about doing what's right for your children however for Kierkegaard the ethical mode of existence is not the final answer to life's riddle either the final answer must issue from life's farthest most distant shores and of course for him that would be the religious mode of existence which is governed by obedience to God rather than secular ethics however the question of whether we're really obeying God or secular ethics can get tricky especially since the two often overlap so for Kierkegaard the most important situation in this regard would be the one that puts the two directly at odds with each other because it's only that kind of situation that really differ wrenchy eighths obedience to God from just obeying the law and for Kierkegaard the archetype for that kind of situation is described in the Bible in Genesis 22 where God commands Abraham to make a human sacrifice of his son Isaac secular ethics would of course tell us that it's wrong to kill one's own children and yet Abraham is commanded by God to do just that so which does he obey of course in the biblical account Abraham does indeed start to make a human sacrifice out of Isaac but is stopped by God in the nick of time consequently Abraham is for Kierkegaard the exemplars Ilan's of the religious mode of existence because his obedience to God and his faith in God were so powerful that they even eclipsed the deep ethical mandate not to kill his own children the movement from the ethical mode to the religious mode exemplified by Abraham involves a definitive leap of faith that Kierkegaard calls the teleological suspension of the ethical since this leap of faith is a form of subjective truth and consequently isn't determined by logic or empirical observation Kierkegaard claims it occurs ultimately by virtue of the absurd where absurdity here does not constitute a diminishment of faith but a positive attribute of its formation finally let's take a look at one of Kierkegaard's most interesting and prescient psychological insights the concept of dread or anxiety or oxd as its variously translated probably the first thing to know about Kierkegaard's analysis of dread is that he regards it as an ontological category in other words a central and inescapable constituent of existence as such it's not just that we occasionally have particular experiences of dread the deeper reality is that these concrete experiences are indicators of the fact that existence itself is structured that way to exist is to be in a state of dread and our particular experiences are simply making that obvious but how is this so let's examine Dredd a little further Kierkegaard describes Dredd somewhat opaquely as a sympathetic antipathy and an anti pathetic sympathy however this might be rendered more lucidly as a desire for what we fear and a fear of what we desire or perhaps an attraction to what repels us and a repulsion toward what attracts us because this idea is somewhat counterintuitive with respect to how we usually think about the relationship between desire and fear or attraction and repulsion probably the best way into it is to follow Kierkegaard by looking at a concrete example have you ever wondered why so many of us are afraid of heights why is it much easier for most of us to stand on the edge of a six-inch platform than on the edge of an open hundred foot elevator shaft after all in both instances we can be reasonably sure that we won't fall simply because we lack the physical coordination to keep standing where we are so the difference isn't really about the physical danger of falling the difference in scariness must have something to do with us with our psychological being rather than our physical being for Kierkegaard the reason why it's scary to stand on the edge of an open elevator shaft is first that some part of us knows that it's within the range of our freedom to jump in and annihilate ourselves so at one level Dredd has to do with the reality of our basic human freedom which is really nothing more than part of our existence so it turns out that the real locus of our dread is our existence itself but the really scary thing is not just that we're free enough to destroy ourselves at any moment the really scary thing is that some part of us might actually want to do that in other words our desire is not nearly as straightforward as it seems at first it's not only about being attracted to the things that make us happy that benefit our lives etc there's also a dark side to our desires and fears at some scary level that's hard even to admit we also desire our own disillusion and destruction this is a psychologically significant insight that Freud was to reformulate almost a hundred years later in the form of the Thanatos Drive and it's significant because it helps make sense of a lot of otherwise puzzling self-destructive behaviors such as those having to do with addictions self sabotage of various sorts why people stay in recurrently abusive relationships etc so all in all Kierkegaard's philosophy constitutes first a powerful defense of Christianity and the value of religious life more generally in today's increasingly secular world but also a deep critique of how we characteristically fall short of the religious life to which we aspire it also contains a wealth of early psychological insights especially into the darker and more difficult regions of the human psyche however perhaps his greatest contribution lies in the fact that his work served as the principal inspiration in springboard for the entire movement of modern existentialism which flourished for more than a century after his death and that's Kierkegaard in nineteen minutes

Channel: Eric Dodson

Views: 363,623

Keywords: Søren Kierkegaard (Author), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Existentialism (Literary School Or Movement), existential psychology

Id: RtlwWMJILBA

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 07 2015